"There is nothing to groan about," retorted Margaret. "Mr. Murray is coming to speak to mamma to-morrow, and if any of you have anything to say against him, you can say it to his face. He is a very respectable man, and has a good income; where's the objection to him?"
Jane could not say. Personally, she did not very much like Mr. Murray; and certain fond visions had pictured a higher destiny for handsome, accomplished Margaret. "I hope and trust you will be happy, if you do marry him, Margaret!" was all she said.
"I hope I shall. I must take my chance of that, as others do. Jane, I beg your pardon for my crossness, but you put me out of temper."
As others do. Ay! it was all a lottery. And Margaret Tait entered upon her hastily-chosen married life, knowing that it was so.
CHAPTER VI.
IN SAVILE-ROW.
Several years went on; and years rarely go on without bringing changes with them. Jane had now four children. William, the eldest, was close upon thirteen; Edgar, the youngest, going on for nine; Jane and Frank were between them. Mrs. Tait was dead: and Francis Tait was the Reverend Francis Tait. By dint of hard work and perseverance, he had succeeded in qualifying for Orders, and was half starving upon a London curacy, as his father had done for so many years before him. In saying "half starving," I don't mean that he had not bread and cheese to eat; but when a clergyman's stipend is under a hundred a year, the expression "half starving" is justifiable. He hungers after many things that he is unable to obtain, and he cannot maintain his position as a gentleman. Francis Tait hungered. Over one want, especially, he hungered with an intensely ravenous hunger; and that was, the gratification of his taste for literature. The books he coveted to read were expensive; impossibilities to him; he could not purchase them, and libraries were then scarce. Had Francis Tait not been gifted with very great conscientiousness, he would have joined teaching with his ministry. But the wants of his parish required all his time; and he had inherited that large share of the monitor, conscience, from his father. "I suppose I shall have a living some time," he would think to himself: "when I am growing an old man, probably, as he was when he gained his."
So the Reverend Francis Tait plodded on at his curacy, and was content to await that remote day when fortune should drop from the skies.
Where was Margaret? Margaret had bidden adieu to old England for ever. Her husband, who had not been promoted in his house of business as rapidly as he thought he ought to have been, had thrown up his situation, home and home ties, and gone out to the woods of Canada to become a settler. Did Margaret repent her hasty marriage then? Did she find that her finished education, her peculiar tastes and habits, so unfitted for domestic life, were all lost in those wild woods? Music, drawing, languages, literature, of what use were they to her now? She might educate her own children, indeed, as they grew up: the only chance of education it appeared likely they would have. That Margaret found herself in a peculiarly uncongenial atmosphere, there could be no doubt; but, like a brave woman as she proved herself, not a hint of it, in writing home, ever escaped her, not a shadow of complaint could be gathered there. It was not often that she wrote, and her letters grew more rare as the years went on. Robert had accompanied them, and he boasted that he liked the life much; a thousand times better than that of the musty old warehouse.